Laughing Gas

Here is a teaching adventure. Yesterday during my 4th block...German III...which is my rowdiest class...something pretty off the wall happened!!!!! 7 Girls and the 15 Boys make up this class and they have been a real challenge to teach this year. Well, on Thursday bad got worse. One student, who is a Senior, fell asleep (for this student it is a common occurrence and after three years of fighting him I just let him sleep...it is better than the alternative). Well, I guess when he sleeps he passes gas. He was letting them fly on Thursday. They were the silent but deadly ones. The boys who sit near him had to move to other seats in the room because they could not handle the smell. The middle part of the classroom started to get a whiff and they were going crazy too. I could not smell anything (thank goodness) and the people who were seated to the right of the student could also not smell anything. The gas passing continued...my students continued making a bid deal about...and there was absolutely NO learning going on. I held strong for about 20 minutes...but then I could not help but laugh. I was laughing at their reaction. I was laughing at the boy who had drawn a flow diagram of the farting and the reason why I was not smelling the gas. I was laughing because I signed up to be a High School teacher, not an Elementary teacher and I had hoped that my students might be more mature...not the case on this particular day. So, I sent the students on a break out in the hall, woke up the gassy student, and decided to get out the Scrabble boards. I did not want to fight the battle. Needless to say...the last 30 minutes of class were pretty good. Students enjoyed playing Scrabble and I did not have to fight to teach them. The smell was pretty bad. Another teacher walked in to ask what was going on and when the stench reached her nostrils she walked right back out.
This is just a fraction of the "fun" that I get to have at my job!